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Shamor — Shabbat & Holiday Site Blocker

Shamor — Shabbat & Holiday Site Blocker

By shamorapp
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Description

Does your Jewish website stay open on Shabbat and Yom Tov?

Shamor automatically closes your WordPress site every Shabbat and Jewish holiday — and reopens it at Havdalah — with zero manual work. No cron jobs, no weekly updates, no remembering to turn it off.

Connect your site to Shamor in under 5 minutes. From that point on, your site displays a beautiful, customizable block screen at candle-lighting time and comes back online automatically when Shabbat ends — week after week, holiday after holiday.

Beyond your website — full community coverage:

Shamor doesn’t stop at your WordPress site. The same account also automatically locks and unlocks your WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, and Discord servers every Shabbat and Yom Tov — so you’re fully covered across every community you run. Your website, your chat groups, and your social communities all go quiet at candle-lighting and come back at Havdalah, automatically, with no manual work.

Perfect for:

  • Jewish businesses and e-commerce stores that want to observe Shabbat online
  • Synagogues and community organizations managing websites, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord
  • Torah content sites, Jewish news, and blogs
  • Any Jewish community leader who wants every platform to reflect their values

How It Works

  1. Start your 7-day trial at shamor.app and add your website
  2. Install this plugin and paste your API key
  3. That’s it — Shamor handles everything automatically from here

Shamor fetches halachic Shabbat and holiday times for your location every week using Hebcal data. Your site closes at candle-lighting and reopens at Havdalah — automatically, every week, for every Jewish holiday on the calendar.

Site Blocking Features

  • 🕯️ Automatic Shabbat & Yom Tov detection — times fetched live, no manual setup
  • 🌍 Halachic blocking modes — block by owner’s time, visitor’s local time, or the stricter of the two
  • 🎨 5 colour themes — Dark Navy, Jerusalem, Midnight, Clean White, Forest — pick in one click
  • 📐 2 layout templates — Full (candles + parasha + zmanim) or Minimal (candles + countdown only)
  • ✨ Beautiful animated block screen — animated candles, zmanim, parasha of the week, and havdalah countdown
  • ⏱️ Candle-lighting countdown — shown to visitors while the site is still open
  • 🔓 Admin bypass — let site admins browse freely during Shabbat
  • 📋 IP whitelist — allow specific IPs to bypass the block
  • 🔀 Redirect mode — send visitors to a custom page instead of the block screen
  • 🎨 Full customization — colors, logo, heading, message, which sections to show
  • ⚡ Ultra-lightweight — 1 server call per week per site; browser reloads at exact transition times with no polling

Shabbat Times Widget

Display candle-lighting and Havdalah times anywhere on your site — no Shamor account required.

  • 🟦 Gutenberg block (shamor/shabbat-times) — drag into any post or page with live editor preview
  • 🧩 Elementor widget — full design controls panel in the Elementor editor
  • 📦 Classic sidebar widget — add via Appearance Widgets
  • 🔡 Shortcode — [shamor_times] works in any theme or page builder
  • 🏙️ 18 city presets — Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York, London, Paris, Melbourne and more
  • ⏱️ Live countdown timer — shows “Shabbat starts in HH:MM:SS” and switches to havdalah countdown during Shabbat
  • 🎨 4 display styles — Card, Minimal, Inline, Banner
  • 🌐 Hebrew & English — auto-detects from WordPress site locale
  • ⚙️ Per-widget customisation — background, text, and accent colours; font size; border radius

Halachic Blocking Modes

Set in your Shamor dashboard under Websites Settings:

  • Owner’s time — site closes based on your location’s Shabbat time (default)
  • Visitor’s time — site closes based on each visitor’s browser timezone
  • Stricter — site closes as soon as either the owner or the visitor enters Shabbat

Zmanim Preferences

  • Choose candle-lighting offset: 10 / 15 / 18 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 40 minutes before sunset
  • Choose havdalah: tzeit ha-kochavim (3 stars, 7.083°) or fixed 42 / 50 / 72 minutes after sunset

External Services

This plugin connects to the Shamor service (shamor.app). Two separate endpoints are used:

1. Shabbat blocking status (https://shamor.app/api/shabbat-status)
Fetches whether your site should currently be blocked and the weekly schedule of times.
* What is sent: your site key (an opaque token you created in the Shamor dashboard) and, for visitor-timezone modes, the visitor’s IANA timezone string (e.g. America/New_York). No names, emails, or IP addresses are transmitted.
* When: once per week server-side (PHP) to cache the schedule; once per browser session from the visitor’s browser when using Visitor’s Time or Stricter modes.

2. Shabbat times widget (https://shamor.app/api/widget-times)
Fetches candle-lighting and Havdalah times for the selected city. No Shamor account is required for this feature.
* What is sent: the selected city’s latitude, longitude, timezone, candle-lighting offset, and your WordPress site’s home URL (to allow the Shamor admin to see which sites have the widget installed). No visitor data is transmitted — this call is made server-side from your WordPress server.
* When: once per city per week, cached in a WordPress transient until one hour after Havdalah.

Service home: https://shamor.app
Privacy policy: https://shamor.app/privacy
Terms of service: https://shamor.app/terms

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

  • Shabbat Times 🕯️

Installation

  1. Upload and activate the plugin in WordPress Plugins Add New Upload Plugin
  2. Start your 7-day trial at shamor.app and add your website
  3. Copy the API key from Shamor dashboard Websites
  4. Go to WordPress Shamor (top-level menu) and paste the key
  5. Save — your site will now close automatically every Shabbat and Yom Tov

FAQ

Do I need an account?

Yes, an account at shamor.app is required — you can start with a 7-day free trial, no credit card needed. The API key links your WordPress site to your Shamor configuration.

Which holidays are covered?

All major Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah, Pesach, Shavuot, and regional holidays (Yom Ha’atzmaut etc.) — based on Hebcal data.

Can I customize the block screen?

Yes — you can set a custom logo, heading, message, background color, text color, and choose which sections (zmanim, parasha, powered-by) to show.

Will bots and search engines be blocked?

No — common crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.) always pass through so your SEO is not affected.

What happens if Shamor’s server is unavailable?

The plugin fails open — your site stays accessible. A local WordPress transient cache stores the last known status.

Is JavaScript required?

Only for “visitor’s time” and “stricter” blocking modes. The default “owner’s time” mode works entirely in PHP with no JS dependency.

Does Shamor work for WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord too?

Yes — Shamor is a full community platform. The same account that protects your WordPress site can also automatically lock and unlock your WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, and Discord servers every Shabbat and Yom Tov. Connect them all from your Shamor dashboard.

Does the Shabbat Times Widget need a Shamor account?

No. The widget fetches times from shamor.app, which handles everything server-side. No account, no API key, and no Shamor subscription is needed.

How do I use the shortcode?

Add [shamor_times] to any post, page, or widget area. You can pass optional attributes: [shamor_times city="new-york" style="card" lang="en" show_parasha="1"]. See the full attribute list in the block editor sidebar.

Does the Elementor widget work without Elementor Pro?

Yes — the Shamor Elementor widget works with the free version of Elementor (version 3.0 or higher).

How many cities are available in the widget?

18 built-in presets: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Haifa, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal, London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, and Buenos Aires.

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Contributors & Developers

“Shamor — Shabbat & Holiday Site Blocker” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Shamor — Shabbat & Holiday Site Blocker” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.5.9

  • Fix: Text domain corrected to shamor-shabbat-guard to match plugin slug
  • Fix: Main plugin file renamed to shamor-shabbat-guard.php
  • Fix: wp_add_inline_style() used for admin menu icon CSS (Plugin Check compliance)
  • Fix: “Powered by Shamor” Elementor widget option defaults to off (opt-in only)

2.5.5

  • Fix: Dynamic theme CSS variables now output via wp_add_inline_style() — full wp_enqueue compliance for block screen
  • Fix: Block screen JS data now passed via wp_add_inline_script() instead of a raw inline script tag
  • Fix: “Powered by Shamor” defaults to off in shortcode and classic sidebar widget (was accidentally on)
  • Fix: Removed “About the Shamor Platform” section from readme — WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord are not plugin features
  • Fix: External Services readme section rewritten — two endpoints documented separately, with exact data-sent and when-called details

2.5.4

  • New: Shabbat Times Widget now fetches times via shamor.app (proxy) instead of calling Hebcal directly — improves privacy and reliability
  • New: Widget sends site URL to shamor.app so admins can see which sites have the widget installed (no visitor data is transmitted)
  • Fix: External Services readme section updated — only shamor.app is listed as a direct external call

2.5.3

  • Fix: All JS and CSS moved to external enqueued files (wp_enqueue_script / wp_enqueue_style compliance)
  • Fix: “Powered by Shamor” widget credit now defaults to off — explicit opt-in required
  • Fix: Block screen “Powered by Shamor” also defaults to off
  • Fix: Clarified readme description — WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord are platform features, not plugin features

2.5.2

  • Fix: Plugin header description translated to English (WordPress.org compliance)
  • Fix: Added uninstall cleanup — all plugin options removed when plugin is deleted
  • Fix: Admin preview URL now uses a nonce for CSRF protection
  • Fix: Admin menu icon no longer uses base64_encode (WordPress.org Plugin Check compliance)
  • Fix: Added External Services disclosure to readme (WordPress.org requirement)
  • Fix: Tested up to updated to WordPress 6.7

2.5.1

  • Fix: Language auto-detects from WordPress site locale (Hebrew for he_IL, English otherwise); “Site default” added to all language selectors
  • Fix: All widget labels fully translated in both Hebrew and English — candle lighting, havdalah, parasha, countdown, powered-by, error message
  • Fix: “Powered by Shamor” widget credit now controlled from a single global toggle in Settings Widget Credit (on by default, subtle 9px style)
  • Fix: Shamor Credit on block screen and Widget Credit are now separate settings

2.5.0

  • New: Shabbat Times Widget — display candle lighting & havdalah times on any page without a Shamor account
  • New: Gutenberg block (shamor/shabbat-times) with live server-side preview in the block editor; native colour pickers for all colour fields
  • New: Classic WordPress sidebar widget (Appearance Widgets)
  • New: Elementor widget with full design controls panel
  • New: Shortcode [shamor_times] for use in any theme or page builder
  • New: 4 display styles — Card (dark gradient), Minimal (border stripe), Inline (horizontal), Banner (full-width header bar)
  • New: Live Shabbat countdown timer — shows “Shabbat starts/ends in HH:MM:SS” within a configurable hour threshold; switches automatically to havdalah countdown during Shabbat
  • New: Per-widget colour customisation — background, text, and accent colours via CSS custom properties
  • New: Font size control (Small / Medium / Large) and border radius slider
  • New: Show/hide parasha name and havdalah time independently per widget
  • New: 18 city presets — Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Haifa, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal, London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires
  • New: Shabbat times cached as WordPress transients (up to 6 days) with automatic expiry 1 hour after havdalah
  • Fix: Plugin logo now bundled locally — no external asset requests (WordPress.org Plugin Check compliance)
  • Fix: Removed deprecated load_plugin_textdomain() call (WordPress.org Plugin Check compliance)
  • Fix: Shamor Credit on block screen defaults to off for new installs

2.4.0

  • New: 5 built-in colour themes — Dark Navy, Jerusalem (warm), Midnight Blue, Clean White, Forest
  • New: 2 block-screen layouts — Full (parasha + zmanim table) and Minimal (candles + havdalah countdown)
  • New: visual theme picker and layout selector in the settings page
  • Fix: custom colour pickers now correctly override the selected preset theme

2.3.0

  • Performance: schedule fetched once per week per site (was: every 60–300 s per page load)
  • Performance: eliminated JS polling entirely — browser fires a reload at exact candle-lighting and havdalah timestamps via setTimeout
  • Performance: visitor timezone check cached in localStorage for the full week (was: sessionStorage, one API call per browser session)
  • Performance: visitor times fetched from public CDN-cached endpoint — only ~400 unique timezones worldwide, virtually zero origin load
  • Security: API key no longer exposed in JS source code for visitor/stricter modes
  • Removed: “Check Frequency” setting (no longer needed — no polling)

2.2.2

  • New: halachic blocking modes — owner time / visitor time / stricter (המחמיר מביניהם)
  • New: candle-lighting minutes preference (10–40 min before sunset)
  • New: havdalah time preference (tzeit / 42 / 50 / 72 minutes)
  • New: candle-lighting countdown bar shown while site is open (can be hidden)
  • New: visitor timezone detection — JS checks browser TZ, server verifies, PHP serves block page
  • Fix: polling now calls shamor.app directly — no more admin-ajax.php load on every poll
  • Fix: adaptive TTL — poll interval tightens automatically near Shabbat transitions

2.1.0

  • New: customizable block screen (colors, logo, heading, message)
  • New: show/hide zmanim, parasha, and “powered by” footer
  • New: IP bypass list and admin bypass option
  • New: redirect mode
  • New: configurable browser poll interval
  • Fix: plugin cache now uses server-provided TTL
  • Removed: bundled GeoIP database

2.0.0

  • Complete rewrite — powered by Shamor SaaS (shamor.app)
  • Shabbat times fetched live from Shamor API
  • Animated candles block screen
  • Browser polling for real-time detection

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